President Bush and both party leaders have caved in to Mexico and ethnic activists’ pressure and are pushing for defacto amnesty plans. Americans must understand that the impact of mass immigration is not only fiscal and economic, but social and political as well.

Last December, Barron’s reported that this country’s illegal immigration population was estimated to be 18 to 20 million and that the U.S. underground economy, fueled "largely by the nation’s swelling ranks of low-wage illegal immigrants," was approaching $1 trillion.

Yet President Bush, Senators Kennedy and McCain want to reward foreign nationals who have broken our immigration laws by granting them temporary work visas and, subsequently, U.S. citizenship. Once naturalized, these amnestied migrants can petition for their extended families to immigrate to the United States.

Within years, they could add tens of millions of mostly low-skilled workers and new voters to this country through births here and chain migration, while paying little to nothing in taxes.

According to estimates, more than half of the illegal immigrants in the U.S. came from Mexico. The political impact of mass Mexican immigration, potentially very severe, has been ignored in the amnesty debate.

La Reconquista

Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington, Chairman of Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, wrote in "The Hispanic Challenge" (2004): ".. Mexican immigration differs from past immigration and most other contemporary immigration due to a combination of six factors... Demographically, socially, and culturally, the reconquista (re-conquest) of the Southwest United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway. No other immigrant group in U.S. history has asserted or could assert a historical claim to U.S. territory. Mexicans and Mexican Americans can and do make that claim."

Indeed, Jose Pescador Osuna, as Mexican Consul General, said in California in 1998: "We are practicing La Reconquista in California."

Just this past December, the Mexican government published a guide advising illegal Mexican nationals on how to cross the U.S. border safely (The Idaho Observer, January, 2005).

Elena Poniatowska, a prize-winning Mexican novelist who has taught at many American universities such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, clearly stated: "Mexico is recovering the territories yielded to the United States by means of migratory tactics."

Furthermore, in 1997 Ernesto Zedillo, then President of Mexico, proclaimed: "I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important - a very important - part of it." Current Mexican President Vicente Fox said in 2004 in Chicago: "We are Mexicans that live in our territories and we are Mexicans that live in other territories. In reality, we are 120 million people that live together and are working together to construct a nation."

Is this why Mexico has vigorously lobbied for an amnesty and benefits for millions of illegal Mexican migrants? We should remember that once naturalized, adult amnestied migrants can vote in U.S. elections. Also, children born here of illegal aliens and guest workers are also U.S. citizens and therefore future voters.

Undoubtedly, many Mexican illegal migrants have no political agenda. But many of them and their children could be mobilized by Mexico to vote according to Mexico’s interests. Juan Hernandez, U.S.-born member of Vicente Fox’s cabinet, has publicly stated: "We are betting that the Mexican American population in the United States... will think Mexico first."

Yeh Ling-Ling is the Executive Director of Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, www.diversityalliance.org